VBL team receives $100,000 award to track abdominal aortic aneurysms
The Vascular Bioengineering Lab (VBL) at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering seeks to understand and develop solutions to the causes and effects of disease in tubular tissue and organs. Part of this research includes a closer look at abdominal aortic aneurysms (AAA) -- the 15th leading cause of death in the United States.
An AAA occurs when the aorta weakens and begins to irreversibly dilate, like a slowly inflating balloon. If left untreated, the risk of rupture increases and has a 90 percent rate of mortality.
The VBL team is working to develop a new model to better predict at-risk patients and are using tools from the lab to perform shape analysis and biomechanical simulations. They will use these data to train a machine learning algorithm to classify different types of aneurysm outcomes. This classifier will be used to develop a predictive model that can help guide clinicians and determine the need for surgical intervention.